How You Can Help
The people of Kibera desperately need your assistance. ChildsLife will continue to deliver these packages to families as long as they need our help.

A contribution of just $15 will ensure that a family of five receives an emergency food package that will feed them for three to five days. A contribution of $150 will provide a week’s worth of food for nearly 40 children and their families.
 
ChildsLife is working to ensure the children of Kibera have the physical and emotional support they need to survive during this devastating time. And we will continue to work in Kibera once calm returns to the community to provide the practical daily solutions children and their families need to not just survive, but to thrive.

Visit www.childslife.nl to learn how you can donate or call +31 (0)23 557 0081 to find out more.

You can make a difference in the lives of Kenya’s most needy children. Please help.


Shacks and cars have been destroyed by the riots

5 February 2008
ChildsLife continues emergency help in Kibera slum, Nairobi
As violence continues across Nairobi, ChildsLife has deliverd food packages,10 kg buckets of dry food, to more than 350 families living in the massive slum of Kibera during the last two weeks. ChildsLife, one of the few aid organizations still operating in Kibera during the violence, will continue delivering food and other assistance with the goal of reaching more than 1,500 families in the coming weeks. ChildsLife's ten years of experience in Kibera along with its strong ties to the community, have enabled it to continue its operations while other aid organizations have been forced to flee. 
 
At the Stara School, run by ChildsLife in Kibera, children are slowly returning to classes after weeks of hiding from the violence. The children, however, are demonstrating clear signs of trauma, crying and shaking at even the smallest noises. Teachers and social workers at the school are trying to help the children during this difficult time, listening to their stories of violence and providing emotional support.
 
ChildsLife is currently exploring the possibility of providing trauma counseling and psychological assistance to the women and children in Kibera who have been exposed to violence, displacement and loss of loved ones. Our staff is meeting with counseling professionals in the area to discuss how a system of pychological assistance can be established in the coming months.

Thousands of families have been left homeless and hungry as violence and political unrest continues to plague Kenya. Homes have been torched. Women and children have been beaten. Many have been raped.

In Kibera, a slum of more than 1 million people in the heart of Nairobi, people have been particularly hard hit. Even in the best of times, the people of Kibera struggle to live off of less than $1 a day. But the recent riots have created massive food shortages here, shutting down shops, cutting off roads and preventing many international aid organizations from delivering food and other assistance to the people most in need.

ChildsLife has worked in Kibera for the past ten years, providing food, education and medical assistance to children and their families. Our strong ties to the community, as well as our local staff who live and work in Kibera, have allowed ChildsLife to overcome obstacles faced by many other organizations and to deliver hundreds of emergency food packages to families desperately in need.

Over the past week, local staff in Kenya have bought food supplies in Nairobi, packaged them in protective containers and hand-delivered them to 250 families in Kibera. ChildsLife will deliver at least another 1,500 packages in the coming weeks.

Along with helping the hundreds of families who have participated in ChildsLife programs over the past decade, we are now using our community network to identifying other children and families who have lost their homes in fires, been beaten and raped, and have nowhere else to turn. Food packages are being delivered to these people most in need, and ChildsLife has just launched a program to offer counseling to women and children who have been most traumatized by the violence.

Please help us ensure that the children of Kibera receive the food and support they need to survive.

Emergency Relief
ChildsLife has not traditionally operated as an emergency aid organization. Instead, we have worked consistently for more than ten years to develop practical solutions to the daily needs of children and their families in Kibera. But the extreme violence that has gripped the region now demands that we develop new strategies to offer emergency relief.

Every man, woman and child who has participated in ChildsLife’s programs over the years in Kibera has been impacted by the recent violence. 

Angela, a mother of seven in our HIV+ program, had her small mud shack burnt to the ground last week and was severely injured as she tried to save her sleeping children. Florence, a woman enrolled in our small business program, lost both her home and business in riots.

Homes have been burned, businesses destroyed, women and children beaten and sometimes raped.  Even those who have not been personally attacked are now facing severe food shortages and are living in constant fear. Many of the more than 500 children enrolled in our Stara School program – where they receive daily meals – are now too scared to come to the school.

ChildsLife is delivering 22-pound food packages in plastic containers to all the families that have been supported by our programs over the years, as well as to thousands of others who the community has identified as most in need.

Each package contains:
 4.5 lbs of rice
 10 lbs of maize flour
 2.5 lbs of sugar
 2.5 lbs of beans
 2.5 pounds of cooking fat
 tea
 salt
 soap

Because the packages are being hand-prepared and delivered by local staff, ChildsLife has been able to keep the costs relatively low, spending just $15 per package. Continued violence and growing food shortages across the city, however, are expected to soon lead to rising prices.

ChildsLife activities in Kibera slum

Report by Patricia Kicak  in Kenya, 17 and 18 January
The violence in Kenya continues after the election results of 27 December. Patricia Kicak, director of ChildsLife International, traveled to Kenya 16 -20 January to survey our project sites and see how the unrest is impacting  families in Kibera.

During Patricia’s visit to Kibera, ChildsLife  concluded that 100% of the people in ChildsLife’s programs have been affected, one way or another, by the rioting following the Kenyan elections. Homes have been burned, businesses destroyed, women and children beaten and sometimes raped.  Many of the children enrolled in our schools are now in hiding or have moved with their guardians to a displacement camp.
Those children still attending school are scared, crying or displaying signs of aggression.

What is ChildsLife doing to help?
To address the immediate needs of families impacted by the violence, ChildsLife  is distributing hundreds of emergency relief food packages to people within our existing programs. ChildsLife also will begin distributing packages to other families across Kibera who have been identified by the community as being the hardest hit by the violence.  The emergency packages contain 10 kilos of dry food – enough to feed a family of five for five days. ChildsLife is also launching a counseling program to assist women and children who have been brutalized during the riots.
 
How will ChildsLife distribute its relief aid?
The food packages are being distributed to families from ChildsLife’s office in Kibera. In some cases, packages are being delivered directly to homes where families who are too scared or too ill to go outside. Because of the constant threat of rioting, food distribution is being carefully managed by the director of ChildsLife’s Kenya program together with ChildsLife’s Kibera coordinator. Every package handed out is registered and the receiver must sign a receipt,  to ensure the food is reaching those families identified as most in need. 
 
What is the cost of a food packet?
The packets include 10 kg of dry food:
2 kg rice
4 kg maize flour
2 kg sugar
Salt
Tea leaves
1 kg dry beans
1 kg cooking fat
Large soap
1 large plastic bucket with cover for food distribution and storage

Each emergency food packet costs € 12  and provides enough food to feed a family of five  for a week.

Please contribute and help ChildsLife buy one or more emergency food packages to feed families in need in Kibera.

Situation report ChildsLife projects Kenya, January 7
The situation in Nairobi and the surrounding areas remains extremely dangerous and precarious. ChildsLife International Director Patricia Kicak remains in constant contact with staff in Kenya and the board of the Stara School, a ChildsLife
educational and food project in Kibera, a slum of 1million people located in the centre of Nairobi.

The board of the Stara School and ChildsLife havedecided to temporary close the Stara School until safety conditions improve in the region.

The school had been closed for “summer vacation” since November, however students continued to receive meals on a daily basis. On Thursday, 3 January, as students
received their lunches, gangs of people began rioting outside the school gates trying to get to the school’s food supplies. Older students, teachers and guards were forced to protect younger children and the school grounds.

Across Kibera, shops and markets have been destroyed in riots and food is growing in short supply.

Because of the threats to the children’s safety at the school, the board made the drastic decision to close its doors until conditions improve.

ChildsLife school and food programmes in the Masai regions of Kenya have thankfully been unharmed by the violence and continue to operate as normal.

ChildsLife will continue  to post updates on the situation in Kenya on its website. You can also contact ChildsLife headquarters in the Netherlands for more information. See right column for address details. 

During the months of October, November and December 2007 KLM AirCares is supporting the work of ChildsLife International by showcasing its efforts for street children in Moscow. ChildsLife’s project supports a streetchildren’s center for children ages 13 - 18 who are on the Moscow streets due to poverty and substance abuse. KLM intercontinental flights are showing a short film, and KLM’s inflight magazine provides further information on the Moscow center.